The 10 Most Hopeless Christmas Movies, Ranked
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There’s no shortage of feel-good Christmas movies. Some will have dramatic moments, sure, but you can’t really call It’s a Wonderful Life downbeat or hopeless when it ends up feeling life-affirming and hopeful by the end. So, it’s not a movie that you'll see mentioned below, nor will you see other movies that have a lot of drama but wholly inspiring endings (see also most adaptations of A Christmas Carol).
Instead, what you'll see below are the most hopeless Christmas movies of all time. They generally work as good anti-Christmas movies, telling darker stories that just so happen to play out during the holiday season. They're not all 100% heavy, because some are more cynical than tragic, though in one way or another, they do ultimately stand out against the more conventional Christmas movies out there that you’ve probably seen discussed (and recommended) to death.
10 'The Ref' (1994)
The Ref is a well-made comedic crime film that just so happens to take place on Christmas Eve, and mostly concerns a bunch of generally unlikable characters clashing, and then it’s kind of funny because no one’s sympathetic. If you take a step back, or try to imagine yourself stuck in this film, then it would be miserable, and that sense of it all being cynical is what makes it clash with most Christmas movies and the sentiments found within them.
There is certainly a time and place for anti-Christmas movies, especially if you're not someone who feels like engaging with the season this year, for whatever reason.
The antagonist here is a burglar who takes a family hostage, but the family is a dysfunctional one, and everyone ends up making everyone feel worse. There is certainly a time and place for anti-Christmas movies, especially if you're not someone who feels like engaging with the season this year, for whatever reason, and so something pessimistic like The Ref has got your back, in that instance.
9 'Bad Santa' (2003)
What do you want, or what were you expecting? It’s a movie called Bad Santa. Okay, Bad Santa is good, but it’s not really feel-good; that’s the unsurprising part. It’s one of the better R-rated Christmas movies out there, and it might also be one of the “most R-rated” Christmas movies, too, because it's about a miserable conman who robs department stores while dressed up as a mall Santa, and then things change for him to some extent when he meets a young kid who’s struggling socially.
Only “to some extent,” since it’s not really warm and fuzzy, by any means. There is a tiny bit of heart here that stops this from being utterly depressing and nihilistic, yet a lot of the humor comes from that, and Billy Bob Thornton is very much the right person to cast if you want that kind of energy, too. It might not be the kind of dark Christmas movie that'll appeal to everyone, for obvious reasons, but it will likely appeal to you if you're after a Christmas-themed dark comedy.
8 'Gremlins' (1984)
There were a ton of great movies released in 1984, including Gremlins. This is also an all-timer if you're looking at subversive and possibly "edgy" Christmas movies, and sure, while it’s not as dark or twisted as some other films here, it’s a pretty wild one for something that’s kind of family-friendly. It’s grisly for something that older kids could probably still watch, and the way it goes from being very jolly and cozy to violent and chaotic is great.
The plot… you know the plot, right? It’s Gremlins. It’s a creature feature, and one of the best ever made. It's a dark and very funny film that's willing to strip away some of the typical magic of Christmas, in turn crafting something wilder and weirder than most Christmas movies. And it memorably ruins the magic of Christmas for potential younger viewers, thanks to having a character monologue about the awful event in her life that made her realize Santa wasn’t real. Merry Christmas!
7 'The Lion in Winter' (1968)
This one is only slightly a Christmas movie, lacking the iconography and warmth you'd associate with such a film, but still, The Lion in Winter is worthy of getting a shout-out here. The premise does ultimately concern a dysfunctional family coming together for the holiday season and arguing a great deal, since they're not just any family, but the royal one, and the King, Henry II, has a few heirs who are power-hungry.
It’s like Succession but set a bit over eight centuries ago, though it doesn’t really feel like your average period drama, because there’s a lot of energy here and an incredible script that feels more modern (but not in a distracting way). The Lion in Winter is excellent as a film on its own, and so maybe the Christmas stuff kind of comes second, but the quality of it overall makes it feel hard to overlook. And, once more, it’s a good anti-Christmas movie, especially if you don’t particularly love the yearly requirement to come together as a family.
6 'Black Christmas' (1974)
There’s one other Christmas-themed slasher movie that’ll be mentioned further down, because it is admittedly more intense and harrowing than Black Christmas. To some extent, Black Christmas is slightly cozy, but it is also tense for its time, not to mention important in the overall history of the slasher genre, since Black Christmas pre-dated other slashers like the original Halloween and Friday the 13th movies by a few years.
Pretty wild to consider there was an essential Christmas slasher movie before there was a true “Halloween” slasher movie; not the holiday you'd expect to be prioritized. Anyway, it’s about the members of a sorority house getting tormented and eventually hunted down by a mysterious killer. Simple stuff, but it’s a slasher movie, so of course it’s not going to be complicated. Black Christmas does what it needs to, and it also did so before a good many other slasher films. Much of it holds up, too (don’t bother with the more recent remakes/updates).
5 'Batman Returns' (1992)
Batman Returns confirms that Gotham City celebrates Christmas. The film plays out when things are snowy and festive, and then it’s notably also quite dark for a superhero movie of its era. 1989’s Batman was already more intense than much of what came before, but Batman Returns is next-level in that regard, pushing things about as far as they can go while (just) retaining a PG-13 rating.
It’s almost a bit much. And sure, other movies here have more violence and profanity, but all this unpleasantness feels a little different in a film like this. So, Batman Returns is more of a cult thing, but the people who do feel this is a cult classic are passionate about Batman Returns; make no mistake. And even if you don’t love it, or enjoy it, it’s not hard to admire how gutsy this one was, and how effectively anti-Christmas it feels among Christmas movies.
4 'Eyes Wide Shut' (1999)
Eyes Wide Shut was the final film Stanley Kubrick ever directed, and it came out posthumously. It is kind of a Christmas movie, taking place at the end of the year and having some of the iconography you'd expect to see, but thematically, it’s not very Christmassy. Nor does it really scream Christmas narratively, since it’s about a man putting himself in great danger psychologically and physically when he spirals after learning his wife once thought about cheating on him.
What happens around the middle of Eyes Wide Shut is absolutely horrifying, and then the final act is about the aftermath of all that, and unsettling in more subdued ways. It’s one of the more anxiety-provoking movies of its era for sure, but it is great, both for its direction and for how well-acted it is (Tom Cruise especially seems willing to do just about anything Kubrick asked of him, so he gives one of his most committed performances here).
3 'Terrifier 3' (2024)
With Terrifier 3, you get more Terrifier, for better or worse. It’s Terrifier set around Christmastime, so Art the Clown does some of his rampage while being dressed like Santa Claus, and after doing something (expectedly) horrifying to another person dressed up as Santa. You know the drill. Art torments people. Art tortures people. Art (eventually) kills people, after they’ve experienced the most pain possible.
Beyond the bloodshed, there are a few things going on narratively, at least more so than the first movie, and as a continuation of the second movie (also better than the first), Terrifier 3 works pretty well. You shouldn’t watch it if you're even a tiny bit squeamish, and there is a whole lot of gore and stress here, but these are all extreme horror movies, so if you’ve been fooled by Terrifier three times now, hoping for something different each time a new one comes out… like, come on.
2 'Spencer' (2021)
The main reason to watch Spencer is Kristen Stewart’s performance as Princess Diana, though you could also watch it if you like Christmas movies but don’t want to watch a nice/happy Christmas movie. It takes place during the holiday season, and is focused on Diana struggling with her marriage and being wrapped up in the royal family, with no one in the institution coming away from things looking particularly good (other than Princess Diana and maybe her two songs).
It's an unrelenting historical drama, but it gets heavy and feels intensely solemn for a good reason, demystifying things and being empathetic toward Diana. Spencer is no ordinary biopic, both because it’s quite dark and also because the timeframe here is rather narrow, but it’s pretty great for what it does and how intense it ends up being. And, once more, Stewart hasn’t even been better than she is here in the lead role.
1 'Brazil' (1985)
You have to squint more than usual to see this as a Christmas movie, even compared to some of the other films here, but Brazil takes place at the year’s end, and there’s some Christmas-like imagery. It’s easier to describe as an essential cult classic sci-fi film, and also a very dark comedy, being about a bureaucrat whose life absolutely spirals out of control, largely due to his world being terrible and his luck being even worse.
The line between reality and fantasy breaks down, though not to the extent that you ever entirely forget just how horrible the dystopian world Brazil takes place in truly is. The way it wraps up is especially soul-crushing, and though before that point, much of Brazil is comedic, it’s also an exhausting sort of comedy. If you don’t like feeling more stressed than usual around Christmas, maybe it’s better to wait and watch this one at a different point in the year.
Brazil
- Release Date
- February 14, 1986
- Runtime
- 143 minutes
- Director
- Terry Gilliam
- Writers
- Charles McKeown, Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard
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